Rome, November 17th, 2016: Sparkle, the International Services arm of Telecom Italia Group and among top 10 global operators, and Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, today announced further enhancement of their partnership. Sparkle will acquire a significant Spectrum capacity across GCX’s Flag Atlantic (FA-1) system and at the same time the two parties will close a strategic capacity deal on the new Europe to Asia System, SEAMEWE-5, to support GCX’s growing market requirements.

Sparkle and GCX are also exploring additional areas of cooperation into markets across South America as well as the Middle East and Asia Pacific leveraging on Sparkle’s Sicily Hub, rapidly growing into a major ecosystem in Europe.

“Earlier this year we expanded our reach into Sparkle’s Sicily Hub in Palermo with a multi-service PoP, providing enhanced coverage and increased diversity options to meet the growing demand for high performance, low latency connectivity across Africa, the Mediterranean and the emerging markets,” said Bill Barney, CEO, Reliance Communications and Global Cloud Xchange. “We are pleased to further expand our partnership with Sparkle across the strategic Atlantic route and into Asia Pacific.”

Located closer than any other European peering point to North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East offering up to 35ms reduced latency versus northern continental locations, Sparkle’s Sicily Hub is served by Seabone, Sparkle’s Tier 1- Global IP Transit service and its connected to an ecosystem of 19 major international submarine cable systems landing in Sicily.

In addition, through the presence of DE-CIX’s IX platform and of major content providers, Sicily Hub allows carriers that land their IP backbones in Sicily to directly interconnect with each other and easily access global content with the best quality.

About Sparkle

Sparkle is the wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom Italia Group (NYSE:TI) with the mission to develop and consolidate the Italian telco’s international services business. As a leading global carrier and through a global backbone of around 560.000 km of fiber, Sparkle offers a full range of IP, Data, Cloud, Data Center, Mobile Data and Voice solutions to fixed and mobile operators, Internet service providers, Media and Content providers and to Multinational enterprises. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 37 countries.

Find out more about Telecom Italia Sparkle at www.tisparkle.com or www.world.tisparkle.com

About Global Cloud Xchange

Global Cloud Xchange (GCX), a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions customized for carriers, enterprises and new media companies. GCX owns the world’s largest private undersea cable system spanning more than 67,000 route kms which, seamlessly integrated with Reliance Communications’ 200,000 route kms of domestic optic fiber backbone, provides a robust Global Service Delivery Platform. With connections to 40 key business markets worldwide spanning Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East, GCX delivers Managed Services to more than 160 countries and offer extensive VPLS-enabled Ethernet network capabilities globally. GCX is equipped to support businesses through the deployment of next generation Enterprise solutions across its Cloud Delivery Networks.